Haye Sarah
Memories of Mother
After Sarah's death, Isaac sees his mother live on in the values and person
of his wife, Rebekkah.
By Rabbi Lewis Warshauer
Reprinted with permission of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
A newspaper reader knows from the headline what the topic of
the article will be. Not so with the Torah. The title of each parashah
is its first significant word; whether that word tells what will follow is
somewhat up to chance. In Parashat Noah, the title does tells us who will be
the central focus of the narrative. In this week's parashah, the title Haye
Sarah seems to be irrelevant, misleading and yet, perhaps, fraught with
meaning.
Haye Sarah means "the life of Sarah." It is thus a
strange introduction for a series of events that begins with her death. The
opening verse of the parashah reads, literally, "Sarah's life was one
hundred twenty-seven years" (Genesis 23:1). It then goes on to tell of her
death and burial. The rest of the parashah describes the recruitment of
Rebekkah (Rivkah) to be Isaac's wife, her return to Canaan with
Abraham's servant and her marriage to Isaac. If parshiyot [Torah portions] were
given a title corresponding to their central character, this one would be Haye
Rivkah ("the life of Rebekkah"), not Haye Sarah.
Toward the end of the parashah, Sarah does reappear--not in
person, but as a memory. We are told that after Isaac meets Rebekkah, he:
"... brought her into his mother Sarah's tent and took
Rebekkah and she became his wife and he loved her. And Isaac was comforted
after his mother's death" (Genesis 24:67).
This is the first instance where the Torah notes that
someone loved someone else. No such mention is made of the feelings between
Adam and Eve, Noah and his (unnamed) wife, or Abraham and Sarah. Why then,
would Isaac's feelings be mentioned here?
Nahmanides explains that the Torah hints that Isaac was
greatly sorrowed by his mother's death and that comfort was distant from him
until he was consoled by his love for Rebekkah; what other reason is there that
the Torah should tell of a man's love for his wife? He loved her and was
comforted by her because of her likeness to Sarah in righteousness and
altruism.
Nahmanides appears to be saying that Isaac loved Rebecca not
so much for herself as for her moral resemblance to his mother. It is as though
he was comforted not by a flesh-and-blood person, but by an idea of a person;
Isaac was in love with what Rebekkah represented. One might object to
Nahmanides' explanation; is this not taking a simple expression of love and
emptying from it any romance? And yet, the Torah itself encourages this
conclusion by reintroducing Sarah in a later scene that features Isaac and
Rebekkah.
My student Sally Magid suggests that the type of love Isaac
felt toward Rebekkah was the root of their future family problems. He admired
her, which was different from loving her in the way a wife wants to be loved.
The result was an overall incomplete communication flow between the two and a
lack of agreement on how to raise their twin sons. We learn in the next parashah
that Isaac loved Esau and Rebekkah loved Jacob; instead of agreeing on which
son to bless, Isaac makes a unilateral move toward Esau and Rebekkah thwarts
him by arranging for a disguised Jacob to get the blessing.
Perhaps Haye Sarah is, after all, a revealing title for this
parashah. It might be that for Isaac, Sarah is not really dead. Her character
is reincarnate in Rebekkah. If this is so, we can sympathize with Rebekkah,
excuse her for arranging Isaac to be tricked in the matter of the blessing, and
maybe even applaud her for it. It is hard to be the object of a certain kind of
admiration, where the admired one is just that--an object. A better kind of
admiration is that which develops from reciprocity and a healthy relationship.
From this parashah one can draw the lesson that even God does not crave an
admiration so strong that it blinds the admirer to the desires of the admired.
Rabbi Lewis Warshauer is a JTS Rabbinic Fellow. More of
Chancellor Schorsch's commentaries can be found on JTS's Parashat Hashavua page.
